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It’s possible to get a mirror finish on your first layer when printing with ABS on kapton tape. Make sure your bed is level and give the kapton tape a quick wipe with ABSynthe; dampen a paper towel with acetone, rub it a few times across a failed print, and then wipe your kapton tape with the residue.

Look closely and you can see the little folds left in the print from bumps and bubbles in the kapton. I’ve given up trying to get my kapton to be perfectly smooth, because I have enough things in my life that give me agita. A few little wrinkles aren’t going to make your print fail if your bed’s level and you’ve got an ABSynthe wipe on your kapton.

If the bottom of your print looks like this, you might have a little trouble getting it off the build platform. I’ve had my best results giving the side of the print a little tap with a hammer while holding my build platform in place. It helps if the platform’s still warm from the print.

This print of a Masonry Bloxen uses Filabot’s recycled ABS at 250°C on a 110° heated bed, on a Replicator1.

1 Mystery Model. It’s in the photo, but won’t be officially public for a few days.

Here’s the scrap left over. Failed prints, brittle stretches of filaments, ramen, extruder scraps, et al. Par for the course for printing with ABS, as far as I’m concerned.

Note the catfill bloxen in the lower right hand corner of the image.

So the next thing to do is box up all the fail and ship it back to Filabot. I managed to cram everything in the original box, including the spool. It’s bulging a little but I don’t think the USPS will complain much.

I’m about halfway through the demo spool that Filabot shipped out to me a few weeks ago so I could test their ABS recycling program.

The spool’s given up all pretense of maintaining its orange color and has now faded completely to ABS Natural. This is intentional on Filabot’s part because they’ve sent me what they call an extruder purge– basically a spool created while cleaning a color out of the Filabot.

Earlier I speculated that the recycled ABS was more brittle than other ABSes, but I found that to be a quirk of a short stretch of the filament. I did get a little more powdering and snapped filaments than usual for a while, but a few meters into the spool the problem went away.

This type of problem is consistent with other rolls of ABS I’ve used in the past and as far as I’m concerned it’s just part of hobbyist 3D printing. All ABSes are not created equal and there’s going to be some gremlins along the way.

This ballista will easily launch a U.S. penny across the room using a single rubber band, and I’ll betcha it’ll crack your fancy triple-pane thermal windows or ding your stainless steel fridge. Be careful with this thing and don’t shoot the cat.

Flagrant stagecraft alert: There’s a twist tie holding the nock in firing position for the photo.

The spastic mob of nerfherders, scallywags, and ne’er-do-wells that follows this blog knows that I’ve been printing almost exclusively with Filabot‘s recycled ABS lately. I’ve got a pound of this stuff to get through for review purposes, so I’m cranking out fortifications and war machines day and night. It’s like the fires of Isengard over here.

I’ve always felt that the starter catapult included with the Seej Starter Set was a little anemic. The base of the throwing arm can get caught on the playing surface, and it arcs too far forward to get a good ballistic trajectory for the penny payload. This engine’s been around a while, and it’s due for an upgrade.

There are two additions to this catapult: the footings and the atlas. The footings are self-explanatory: print four of them and snap them onto the side braces to get the end of the throwing arm off your gaming table.

The atlas stops the throwing arm a little sooner than the crossbeam normally would, which gives you more range and power than a stock penny catapult.

These upgrades are backwards-compatible with existing penny catapults, so if you’ve been playing Seej at your makerspace this will only enhance your game. Remember that you probably won’t get a lot of torque with a single rubber band, so use two or three.

Flagrant stagecraft alert: I’m using a twist tie to hold the lever arm in place for the photo.

You can grab the catapult here and print it yourself. Have fun, and wear eye protection!

I think I’ve got the Filabot Recycled ABS settings pretty well dialed in. I’m generally printing at 245° on kapton with a swipe of ABSynthe on at 110° HBP. This model is a Masonry bloxen, the primary defensive model used in a game of Seej.

Priming your HBP with ABSynthe is easy and really helps with print adhesion. First dampen a paper towel with a little acetone. Take a failed print, preferably something with some surface area, and firmly brush it a few times with the damp paper towel to get just a little plastic on there. Then wipe the towel across your kapton tape.

Note the color change from the first print a few days ago. As I’m working my way through this roll I’m finding that the Filabot Orange is clearly giving way to Filabot Natural. Right now we’re kind of looking at Filabot Creamsicle.

I’m not sure if this roll was a one-off sent to me by Filabot or if this is a consistent quality issue with the filament; I’ll get in touch with them and report back.

UPDATE: Filabot tells me that they sent a “purge extrude,” created in the process of transitioning from one color to another. Customers get filament of consistent color all the way through. Since the orange was pretty consistent while it lasted, I have no reason to doubt this claim.

The fine folks at Filabot were kind enough to send me a sample of their Recycled ABS filament so that I can put it through its paces. My first print is an upgraded Seej Battle Pennon with a cylindrical finial, which you can download for free at The Forge.

Note to other manufacturers, I’ll be happy to take a look at your product and give it a fair evaluation on this blog. email me if you’d like to get the ball rolling.

Filabot’s located behind the Tofu Curtain in idyllic Vermont. I have strong attachments to that state; I went to college there, got my first real job there, met the lovely and talented Mrs. Zheng3 there, returned there after years in Toronto and Chicago, and frankly expected to end my days chopping wood in the Green Mountain State before life’s capricious winds required a move back to the wilds of the American Midwest.

So I know and love the local culture of Vermont, and it surprises me not in the least that a Vermont entrepreneur would be among the first to start a service recycling ABS plastic for 3D printing. Filabot embodies good-ol’ Yankee frugality blended with hippy-dippy save-the-earthism and a splash of tech savvy for flavor.

Here’s Filabot’s dealio: you buy a pound of their recycled ABS and they send it to you with a prepaid shipping label in the box. When you’re done with the spool, send it back to them with as many failed prints as you can cram in there.

They complete the cycle by pureéing your fails and feeding them back into a Filabot to be made into new filament.

The box of filament arrived a few days ago, and perhaps surprisingly for a package shipped from Vermont, did not smell of patchouli. Just a 3d-printed spool of filament held together with zip ties. Nice touch on printing your own spools, Filabot. Dollars to donuts that cardboard is recycled too.

I’m presuming that this spool is Filabot’s Orange ABS. Note that the color gets a little inconsistent further down the spool. I don’t expect this to be a problem for me, since many of my models get a post-print spray-painting and those that don’t are utilitarian in nature.

I’ll be printing with this spool until it’s gone so I can really beat on this filament and see what it can and can’t do. So far, the filament is smooth and consistent in texture. No bubbles or lumps.

I suspect it’s a little more brittle than other ABSes I’ve used. I’ll give it a few dozen more meters of printing before I make that judgement call, though.

All three parts of the flag printed smoothly with no extrusion problems in my Replicator1. I went with an extrusion temperature of 250°, a little hotter than Filabot’s recommended 230°-240° range. This filament doesn’t smell any worse than traditional ABS when it’s melting, which is to say it’s not bad at all. I’ve used ABSes that are flat-out stank, so this was a pleasant surprise.

So! Stay tuned for more prints with Filabot’s recycled filament. Bloxen are next in the queue.